Recent answers to Firefox is using beyond-excessive amounts of memory while doing almost nothing.https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/9720192013-09-21T19:24:59-07:00Then why is htop reporting that it's using almost 1.6GB? If I understand it right, resident memory i2013-09-21T19:24:59-07:00Glitchhttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481872<p>Then why is htop reporting that it's using almost 1.6GB? If I understand it right, resident memory is the amount of physical memory the process is using. However according to htop, if I were to fill all but 1GB of my RAM up with something like a RAMDisk using ramfs, and fill it up with data from /dev/random, it would start writing to SWAP even though according to the resident memory usage in Firefox it shouldn't have to touch swap.
</p><p>EDIT: Spamming CC, GC, and the minimize memory button shaved about 30MB off of the resident usage, however, as I understand it, those operations are done every so often by Firefox itself as necessary.
</p>You can hover each of those entries to see a description as you can see at the bottom of the about:m2013-09-21T19:11:33-07:00cor-elhttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481865<p>You can hover each of those entries to see a description as you can see at the bottom of the about:memory page.<br>
It says that resident is better suited to get an impression of the memory usage because that is the actual amount of physical memory that is in use. So 688 MB physical memory isn't that much.
</p><p>Does this amount change if you start Firefox with no tabs opening?
</p><p>You can also try to click the button to minimize the memory usage.
</p>I'm using a 64 bit Linux build according to pacman.
Also according the user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11;2013-09-21T18:51:24-07:00Glitchhttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481859<p>I'm using a 64 bit Linux build according to pacman.
</p><p>Also according the user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0
</p><p>@cor-el
</p><p><br>
</p><pre> 1.56 MB ── canvas-2d-pixel-bytes
10.52 MB ── gfx-surface-image
64.87 MB ── gfx-surface-xlib
0.00 MB ── gfx-textures
0 ── ghost-windows
387.09 MB ── heap-allocated
445.63 MB ── heap-committed
58.57 MB ── heap-committed-unused
15.14% ── heap-committed-unused-ratio
3.57 MB ── heap-dirty
153.90 MB ── heap-unused
6.09 MB ── images-content-used-uncompressed
240.00 MB ── js-gc-heap
1.56 MB ── js-main-runtime-temporary-peak
26 ── page-faults-hard
8,499,977 ── page-faults-soft
688.90 MB ── resident
666.79 MB ── resident-unique
11.04 MB ── storage-sqlite
</pre>
<p>1,489.26 MB ── vsize
</p><p>I hope that's what you were looking for.
</p>Is Firefox actively using this memory or only reserving it as virtual memory?
You can check the memo2013-09-21T18:44:13-07:00cor-elhttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481857<p>Is Firefox actively using this memory or only reserving it as virtual memory?
</p><p>You can check the memory usage on the about:memory page.
</p>Are you using 32 bit or 64 bit Firefox? Can you test the 64 bit version?
nightly.mozilla.org
2013-09-21T18:41:40-07:00Waka_Flocka_Flamehttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481856<p>Are you using 32 bit or 64 bit Firefox? Can you test the 64 bit version?
</p><p><a href="http://nightly.mozilla.org" rel="nofollow">nightly.mozilla.org</a>
</p>I'm using Catalyst 13.8 Beta straight from AMD because I'm using xorg-server 1.14 on arch.
2013-09-21T18:36:49-07:00Glitchhttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481853<p>I'm using Catalyst 13.8 Beta straight from AMD because I'm using xorg-server 1.14 on arch.
</p>Are you sure all your graphics drivers are updated, refresh the db in your package manager (like Syn2013-09-21T18:33:14-07:00Waka_Flocka_Flamehttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481852<p>Are you sure all your graphics drivers are updated, refresh the db in your package manager (like Synaptic) and mark all upgrades.
</p>&gt;has 16GB ram
&gt;uses FF
&gt;still complains
2013-09-21T18:30:22-07:00mrbubl3shttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481851<p>&amp;gt;has 16GB ram
&amp;gt;uses FF
&amp;gt;still complains
</p>"GPU Accelerated Windows 0/2 Basic Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graph2013-09-21T18:24:24-07:00Glitchhttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481849<p>"GPU Accelerated Windows 0/2 Basic Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version &amp;lt;Something recent&amp;gt; or newer.
Vendor ID ATI Technologies Inc.
WebGL Renderer Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version &amp;lt;Something recent&amp;gt; or newer."
</p><p>I've never had any luck getting it working under Linux. BUt just to be sure I disabled it, and there is still no difference. It's not a memory leak as Firefox is still using the same amount of RAM when I close it as when I open it to all of the pages I had open.
</p>Have you disabled hardware acceleration?
Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration2013-09-21T18:17:14-07:00Waka_Flocka_Flamehttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481847<p>Have you disabled hardware acceleration?
</p>
<ul><li> <a href="/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-extensions-themes-to-fix-problems" rel="nofollow">Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems</a>
</li></ul>Thanks for the reply. This has been done every time I have installed a new Linux distro on my comput2013-09-21T18:04:35-07:00Glitchhttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481846<p>Thanks for the reply. This has been done every time I have installed a new Linux distro on my computers 3-4 times a month for the past few months, and three times on Windows. It never makes a difference. Loading an old one also makes no measurable difference.
</p>Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
See "Creati2013-09-21T17:43:06-07:00cor-elhttps://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/972019#answer-481844<p>Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
</p><p>See "Creating a profile":
</p>
<ul><li><a href="https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles" rel="nofollow">https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles</a>
</li><li><a href="http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues" rel="nofollow">http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues</a>
</li></ul>
<p>If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over the problem.
</p>
<ul><li><a href="http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox" rel="nofollow">http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox</a>
</li></ul>